Talk:Argument from ignorance

"In law" section

This section seems needlessly wordy. There are two real options: either the jury determines that the evidence of guilt is sufficient (so the person is "judged guilty") or not (so the person is "judged not guilty"). Instead the decision tree multiplies the complexity needlessly, by adding conditions that the person "really" is guilty or not.

I just don't see how this better explains the situation. Phiwum (talk) 16:49, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Suggested Removal of 2nd Paragraph

I suggest killing the paragraph that currently mentions Russell's teapot and raises the idea that there could be good reasons to believe that something doesn't exist.

Here's why.

1. If there are good reasons to believe that something doesn't exist those 'good reasons' (if they are in any way valid) constitute a form of evidence or knowledge. No reason to remind people that the argument from ignorance may not apply where the adversaries are not ignorant. 2. Failure to state the reverse. Why say, "Sometimes where we know very little there's good reason to assume that a proposition is false." If we don't include the opposite possibility "Sometimes... that a proposition is true." 3. Lastly, to come to the point. Get this thing out of here because it belongs the God vs. No God debate and comes in unnecessarily and right up front rather than defining the fallacy itself which has much broader usage, and frankly, is the topic of the article. Worse still, these sentences shamelessly argue to rescue the specific perspective that, in the case of God vs. Atheism, (and I can back this up with Russell's famous teapot!) the atheist has good reason to believe the proposition of God to be false without committing the fallacy of argument from ignorance. Whether such a distinction is justifiably clarified I don't really care either way. That there is a kind of predictive and preemptive strike against the way someone might apply or misapply the argument from ignorance to a specific debate is just a silly joke. Again, get this out! Wikipedia is biased enough!

If this is a real concern, eliminate the possibility of misapplication of the fallacy by clearer definition of the fallacy itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.67.242.251 (talk) 22:08, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The null result of the Michelson–Morley experiment

I have removed the Michelson–Morley experiment from the list of examples.

The reason is that the article makes an unsourced claim that its null result is "strong evidence" that there is no luminiferous aether.

I have never seen such a claim, only that the luminiferous aether cannot explain the observed null result, which is not the same (and which is not a logical fallacy).

There are many things I have never seen and a source (notable in the field of physics) making an argument from ignorance regarding this observation would justify reinserting the example. Lklundin (talk) 17:42, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Basic argument — Plagiarism.

Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. That content was plagiarised from "Vision and Visual Perception," By Duco A. Schreuder. I put it in a BLOCKQUOTE element with a citation. I think I did right but I am not sure.

The reference in that page, to www.mnstate.edu/custom404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/gracyk/courses/phil 110/fallaciesexplained.htm#ignorance, is a broken link. I deleted that ref. Xkit (talk) 22:52, 24 May 2015 (UTC)